But Where Are the Gods?

The Past Two Years

It has been a while since I’ve written a journalistic update here. It looks like the last time I may have was over two years ago, in June of 2013, when I wrote about my journey as a blogger. It’s not that long ago, though it seems like ancient history.

When I wrote that, my daughter was just over a year old, and I was I was in the beginnings of a relationship with Jade. I had no idea what direction I wanted to take my website efforts in — the archives of 2010–2015 are a greater amalgam of content from various domains and false-start blogs than the archives of 2003–2009 ever were.

Proudly Displaying What She and I Built at a Fatherhood Program

My daughter is now three and mere months away from four. I’m at a loss to explain how that has happened so rapidly; years were so long before she came along. She’s in school now — the first year of a two year preschool journey — and her teachers love her. I try to be as involved with her schooling as I can be, volunteering and showing up for events whenever my work schedule allows. To that end, I’m the vice chairperson of the parent committee — why not chairperson? Because I have no clue what I’m doing, of course.

She’s taken to school wonderfully, right from day one. She’s lost some interest in things she loved when she was two, like My Little Pony, but is as enthusiastic as ever when it comes to things like snails and insects, finding toads, playing in dirt, climbing, singing, playing her drums, and more. She grows closer to mastering her balance bike all the time, and I can’t wait for the inevitable upgrade to a pedal bike.

Jade and I were married almost a year ago, on 2014-10-10, in a private little ceremony at the courthouse. I’m enjoying getting to see all of the creative things Jade does with her crafts, and she’s enjoyed making sure I know the sacred rules of how to handle craft fabrics and which scissors are not for paper. Most of all, I enjoy our (still) new mixed family — two cats Kes and B’Elanna, Max the dog, the kiddo, Jade, and me. Between all of us, things stay pretty interesting around here.

And things certainly are getting interesting in my life. Besides the vice-chairperson thing, which as of right now I’ve not had to do anything with as the next meeting isn’t until October, I also became an ordained clergy person of the Church of Spiritual Humanism, which isn’t something I’ve ever done anything with, but that’s about to change.

My sister-in-law Tabatha has invited me to officiate her wedding, this weekend. I’m nervous — public speaking isn’t something I’m terribly thrilled with — but am excited to be a part of it.

The impending wedding date has made me give more thought to what it is to be ordained, about what humanism is or could be, about spirituality. To that end I’m enjoying the insights in Sam Harris’ Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, as well as the different viewpoints being expressed on Secular Now, a growing group on Facebook made up of people who are tired of religion interfering in politics, science, education, healthcare, et al. Here’s one of the videos I recently published on Secular Now:

I still have no idea in which direction I want to take this site, though I have been working on updating old posts for SEO and such, removing some of the more pointless cruft that had accumulated through the years, adding featured images to posts to make even old content pop.

Despite the uncertainty of that, the nervousness of this weekend’s wedding, and the joyful chaos of a home filled with youth and love, things are going well, and they’re only getting better!